Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

i don't often give books really high ratings, but this is a really good book.

perfect mixture of gravity and levity. especially attractive to people like me, literary science nerds with a penchant for history and current events.

i am smitten.

This is one of my favorite books. Very grounding and touching. I read it whenever I'm having a rough time in life, and it puts everything in perspective for me.

I absolutely loved the style of this book. Between the narration verging on funny, blunt, and completely misunderstood; to the many pictures and details that bring everything together. I absolutely adored this book. Oskar resonated with me in his childish reasoning, to his very real adult confusion. Everything in this book is an unfortunate series of misunderstanding, yearning, and the unspeakable words hidden within all of us. I purposely forced myself to take multiple days to read this, just so I wouldn't have to admit it was over. Definitely a book I will return to again.

very very good. 4 stars because I was able to leave my bed after reading ;/

it was an unbearable pain to let go of this story. truly one of the best things i've read in a while. just as oskar didn't want to let go of the last mystery his father left for him. i need to sit on this for a bit before i start another book. the only reason i'm not crying right now is because i'm in public. this is a rare example of a “must-read” book that is actually entirely deserving of its hype.

This was an incredibly unique and interesting book. It's going to take some time and reflection to process it. I recommend reading it as opposed to listening, I can see why it would not have the same effect if you're listening to it.

I don't know why the average for this book is less than 4. This is a spectacular novel about a young boy (Oskar, 9) trying to find meaning in his father's senseless death on 9/11.

Maybe it was structure people took issue with. I found the timeline jumps hard at the beginning but only because I wasn't paying enough attention to the chapter titles which clearly told me the timing. The dialogue presented as prose might have thrown some off too.

Oskar is such a charmer. His internal dialogue captivating, but his external dialogue was even more delightful. A no-nonsense approach to the world (Asperger's maybe?) made the conversation believable.

Extremely gutwrenching and incredibly brilliant.

If the “I'm 14 and this is deep” meme was a book about 9/11 it would be this. I hated every single page.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is the perfect example of a dual perspective novel that doesn't really work for me. I probably would have liked it more without the grandparents storyline. I think the choice to use mixed media was a good one and was executed well. On the other hand, the use of that picture in fiction feels Extremely Wrong and Incredibly Tone Deaf.

The major plots of this novel are great. I liked Oskar's adventures around New York, I liked the interesting relationship between his grandparents. But oh I didn't like the writing technique at all. It quickly became annoying with the stream of consciousness-style writing and the gimmicky pictures. But the plots saved it, and I wanted to read to the end to see how things would wrap up.

I really loved the film. I think the film is better than the book, but that's because the book spends a lot of time focusing on things that aren't touched on too much in the film. And the main plot of the film is what I loved. I could read pages and pages about Oskar and his life. I actually found myself skipping some of the pages that were about his grandparents. It was a great book and it was very emotional. A well written story, but a better scripted film.

Le deuil d'un petit garçon pas comme les autres, des rencontres, des retrouvailles, beaucoup d'émotions. Une histoire touchante.

I wish I could give this three and a half stars. While I enjoyed reading it, I found parts of it to be confusing, particularly who was supposed to be narrating in certain chapters. But a decent read, otherwise.

Allright, but overrated.

Un enfant de 9 ans, à l'intelligence supérieure à la moyenne et à l'imagination débordante, essaye de faire le deuil de son père, mort dans les attentats du 11 Septembre. C'est un drôle de roman, un peu compliqué à suivre : ça part dans tous les sens, c'est bourré d'histoires parallèles, même on parvient à reconstituer les pièces du puzzle à la fin. C'est joli, plein de bons sentiments, parfois émouvant. Mais il m'a manqué quelque chose pour en faire un très bon roman. Peut-être parce que certains passages sont assez pénibles à lire.

I read this because I assigned Nicole Krauss' History of Love as a summer reading assignment, and this book was mentioned in pretty much every review of that book. The two books do share some similarities (both are about a child investigating a mystery of their dead father and both mix traditional narrative storytelling with piecemeal excerpts of letters/journals/etc.) but I think Foer's effort was not nearly as good as his wife's. The parts of the books told from Oskar's point of view are remarkable. Foer perfectly captures the voice of an intelligent, curious, and shellshocked little boy. The other parts of the book, consisting of letters written by Oskar's grandparents and the occasional scrapbook photograph aren't nearly as engaging. The way Foer uses simple, declarative sentences to try to capture the voice of Oskar's immigrant grandmother quickly grows tiresome. And I'm honestly not sure what to think about the use of 9/11 in the book. At times, it seems entirely essential to both the plot and to establishing aspects of Oskar's character. At other times, especially when Foer is inserting photographs of the falling man, the use of 9/11 seems designed to shoehorn in an extra layer of sadness to the story.

I read this because I assigned Nicole Krauss' History of Love as a summer reading assignment, and this book was mentioned in pretty much every review of that book. The two books do share some similarities (both are about a child investigating a mystery of their dead father and both mix traditional narrative storytelling with piecemeal excerpts of letters/journals/etc.) but I think Foer's effort was not nearly as good as his wife's. The parts of the books told from Oskar's point of view are remarkable. Foer perfectly captures the voice of an intelligent, curious, and shellshocked little boy. The other parts of the book, consisting of letters written by Oskar's grandparents and the occasional scrapbook photograph aren't nearly as engaging. The way Foer uses simple, declarative sentences to try to capture the voice of Oskar's immigrant grandmother quickly grows tiresome. And I'm honestly not sure what to think about the use of 9/11 in the book. At times, it seems entirely essential to both the plot and to establishing aspects of Oskar's character. At other times, especially when Foer is inserting photographs of the falling man, the use of 9/11 seems designed to shoehorn in an extra layer of sadness to the story.

I really wanted to LOVE this book, but in the end I probably Really Liked it. The structure and storytelling is so different to anything else I have read. I loved the use of colour and grammatical errors; of pictures and paragraph spacing, but in the end I felt that this book just tried too hard. It's definitely worth a read but will not go onto my most memorable list.

My opinion of this book can best be summed up with one of my in-progress comments, “I wish I hadn't.” I felt no connection to any character. I feel the author was trying too hard to do the whole intellectual thing. The writing sucked, the 9 year old boy was not a believable character, and I just did not care one iota what happened to any one. So, once again: I wish I hadn't.

Though the story was not so captivating, but the narration was absolutely flawless. Very heart-wrenching

I just found it a bit boring and couldn't wait til
I finished it. Seemed to be trying too hard to be clever. My fellow book clubbers are indicating they loved it and from the reviews here it is certainly a polarizing experience.

I found I could see the author too much in the writing of this book. In spite of having chapters from several different characters perspectives, it never quite got to the point where I was hearing several different voices. Everyone's voice felt too similar, and that seems almost impressive when you consider this means a 9-year old boy who “was tested with inconclusive results for aspergers” at times has a voice similar to a 70-something year old woman. Unfortunately, the author's overwhelming voice also sometimes over-steps into being overly-saccharine.; the text seems to have too many with “deep-thoughts (tm)”, where introspection too-often moralizes.

That being said, I enjoyed this book more than I expected to. The two parallel stories were engaging and the imagery in parts was lovely. I was also comfortable with how the text incorporated September 11th in the story, which was a concern I had when starting the novel.

I think I was expecting more from this because everybody told me it was amazing!!

I'm not saying it isn't, it's really good, but I was expecting more.

I'm really conflicted on how I feel about this book.

There are a lot of great ideas and little touches that I appreciated, but there are just as many lazy attempts at sentimentality that really bugged me.

I liked it overall though, and it is a pretty quick, easy read.